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The other day we dressed up for the Opera and I sat and GG fidgeted through the first half of Lepage’s The Ache’s Progress. Thanks to my friend at the Opera we were very lucky to have expensive seats costing between £100 and £140 each at a tiny fraction of the regular price.
The surprising thing is we found nothing of merit in any aspect of this work or its production. The two reviews I read were respectively mildly pleased and displeased. They described an anodyne and cliched Faustian story. We thought in the second half, which we didn’t stay for because nothing in the first gave us reason to, there might be some twist to give Stravinsky the last laugh. But it seems there is none.
But this work, aside from Robert Lepage’s production has longevity. I can only think it must be the composer’s reputation and the music alone which was hard to pay attention to at the Opera because of the dullness of the libretto.
Some people were paying over £400 for their seats. I wonder if they were any more surprised.
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To join my union website I had to write down a figure from history I admire. I’ve never really had one to hand but then I thought of JS Bach.
After experiencing the St Matthew Passion in the 2008 Proms my take on Bach is that he accomplished a degree of egolessness in musical composition for which I’ve heard no match in any other composer born since that I’ve heard.
Turning on Radio 3′s Classical Collection this morning – a consistently rewarding programme – I caught this incredible piece Bach cleverly engineered to let that part of the universe we easily take for granted to be remembered to humankind:
10.36*Bach
Chaconne (Partita in d minor BWV 1004)
Ida Haendel (violin)
from a 1999 recording for LP.
